New Orleans seminary receives diverse assistance

Posted: 9/30/05

New Orleans seminary
receives diverse assistance

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)–Seminaries across the theological spectrum offered help to New Orleans Baptist Theological Semi-nary, which temporarily moved operations from its flooded campus to a satellite site in Atlanta.

Theological schools as diverse as conservative Dallas Theological Seminary and liberal Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., offered help, including waived tuition and streamlined enrollment, to students who want to transfer for a semester or a year.

Even Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia–2,817 miles away by car–offered to waive international fees for New Orleans' students.

Moderate Baptist schools, such as Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, and Gardner-Webb University's M. Christopher White School of Divinity, have invited students from New Orleans to enroll temporarily while the school gets back on its feet.

The Richmond seminary is offering to pay tuition costs for students who enroll in web-based or on-campus courses until normal operations resume at the New Orleans campus. At least one student has accepted a similar offer from Truett Seminary.

Dan Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools, wrote New Orleans President Chuck Kelley to relay the offers of help.

But officials at New Orleans hope to keep most of their students connected to the Southern Baptist school.

About 1,500 of the seminary's 3,400 students are enrolled in one of 17 extension centers across the Southeast, which means almost half of the student body can continue study uninterrupted.

The 1,900 New Orleans-based students are being encouraged to enroll in the Atlanta extension, where the seminary administration has moved temporarily, in other extension centers, Internet classes or other alternatives.

Although the New Orleans campus will be closed until at least January 2006, most of the scheduled classes will be conducted as “directed study” with Internet enhancements, a seminary official said.

“Therefore, all of our on-campus students can complete this semester and keep on track toward graduation,” Provost Steve Lemke said in a letter to Aleshire. “Although a few of our students have transferred to other institutions who generously offered free tuition and lodging, we hope to keep the overwhelming number of students enrolled at NOBTS through these diverse delivery systems.

“Although most of our academic buildings survived with only modest damage, all 40 of our on-campus faculty residences and many of our student apartments were flooded from between four feet to 10 feet, essentially destroying all the earthly possessions of many in our seminary family.”

Most of the damage to faculty and student residences will not be covered by insurance, Lemke explained.

Some churches and seminaries are offering free or affordable housing to seminary students left homeless by the flooding.

Among the seminaries offering various types of assistance are Virginia Protestant Episcopal in Alexandria, Va.;, Lutheran Theolog-ical Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C.; Associated Men-nonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.; United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio; and Lexington (Ky.) Theological Seminary.

Southwestern Baptist Theolog-ical Seminary welcomed the New Orleans faculty to its Fort Worth campus for a hastily scheduled retreat Sept. 9-11, during which the New Orleans faculty made plans to continue the fall semester.

At a Sept. 27 meeting, New Orleans Seminary trustees voted unanimously to keep the school in New Orleans, and they proposed adminstrative plans to restore the main campus to normal operations by August 2006.